MS Office Activation tied to what?

I joined this forum because of a specific problem caused by death of my hard drive. The drive wouldn't boot, but I could still read the contents. My system is a Lenovo 9960APU with Win 10 Pro 64. I got a new drive and started to rebuild from scratch. Everything was going great until I tried to reinstall my MS Office 2019 Pro Plus. I was able to install it fine, but when I tried to use it it said it needed activation. It was activated on my messed up drive about 6 months ago. I contacted Microsoft support and spent about an hour with them. In the end they said I'd have to get a new key. Boy was I pissed off.
So I did. I bought a new key and was able to reinstall my MS Office 2019 Pro Plus, activate it and have been using it for a week.
Today I took an image copy backup of my c:\ drive. I put in a new hard drive and recovered using the image copy. Everything worked smoothly. On reboot I went to my Outlook and low and behold, it said It had to be activated. I took the new drive out and replaced with the one I had just rebuilt, and on reboot my outlook was activated. If it was activated on my drive a week ago, why is it now not activated after doing an image copy/recover on a new drive? this was all done on my 9960APU. Any thoughts?

On how many drives do you think you can have an activated copy at the same time?

I've reactivated MS Office 2019 Pro Plus on the same computer many, many times. Usually it just activates after I enter the product key, but a few times I've had to call the automated activation number and tell the computer on the other end it was only installed on one computer. That being said, I don't see how restoring a backup image onto a new drive installed in the same computer would affect Office activation.

I don’t see “why is it now not activated after doing an image copy/recover on a new drive?” should be a problem.

When you contacted Microsoft support, did they say why you needed a new key?

I’m wondering if activation on 2 drives each using the same key isn’t allowed?
--- Maybe MS Office 2019 Pro Plus needs to be uninstalled on the drive you don’t want to use?

And/or are you using a different user account on each new drive instead of the associated account for your MS Office 2019 Pro Plus?
According to this article,
Download and install or reinstall Microsoft 365 or Office 2019 on a PC or Mac
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...2-23adc4716658
It includes "Sign in with the account you associated with this version of Office."

You might want to Read the Software License Terms for Office of your MS Office 2019 Pro Plus using the drive that works for you.
--- Hopefully both activation & applicable user account are well explained.
Open Outlook or any other app for your MS Office 2019 Pro Plus. I don’t have Outlook so I used Word.
Click File > Account > About Outlook in your case > View the Microsoft Software License Terms.
Caveat: It’s quite the read.

Hi there

I have cloned discs and restored image backups -- Office 2019 has only rarely asked for re-activation in my case -- and that only happened when installing one of the "Preview" / Development rings of Windows -- the product simply activated normally when I just clicked the message from within office "This product isn't activated - activate now" -- and it didn't even ask for a product key.

I suppose it also depends on where you obtained Office 2019 from -- usually they are OK but not always some of those cheap Office 2019 copies available over parts of the Internet might not be 100% legit.

Cheers
jimbo

I received around 10 responses to my post. Thank you to each.
But I don't know how to answer the questions each of you asked me.
What am I supposed to click on to reply?
The first question was 'how many drives do I think my license should allow'.
The answer is 1.
I'm not trying to steal from Microsoft.
I paid $60(CAD) 6 months ago for a product key for MS Office 2019 Pro Plus.
I was doing just fine until a month ago when my hard drive went south.
When I started to rebuild my system with a new hard drive, and reinstalled my office, I couldn't activate it.
MS said my key had been used 23 times. But I'm thinking if I used the key successfully 6 months ago, how could anyone else use my key to activate.
So 2 weeks ago I paid $129(CAD) for another key that I used to activate my software. And I have been using it fine for 2 weeks.
When I posted to this forum a month ago, the first responder berated me for not having a backup of my system.
So that is why I took an image copy backup of my newly rebuilt system, and then put in a new hard drive to do a restore to. test that everything worked fine across the process... But from my recovered drive, when I tried to bring up Outlook and went to look at my account, it said that it needed Activation. Again I did all of this on the same Lenovo system 9960APU.
Why should an image copy from one drive when restored to another drive, not include the activation?
Best regards for Christmas and the New Year!

- - - Updated - - -

I received around 10 responses to my post. Thank you to each.
But I don't know how to answer the questions each of you asked me.
What am I supposed to click on to reply?
The first question was 'how many drives do I think my license should allow'.
The answer is 1.
I'm not trying to steal from Microsoft.
I paid $60(CAD) 6 months ago for a product key for MS Office 2019 Pro Plus.
I was doing just fine until a month ago when my hard drive went south.
When I started to rebuild my system with a new hard drive, and reinstalled my office, I couldn't activate it.
MS said my key had been used 23 times. But I'm thinking if I used the key successfully 6 months ago, how could anyone else use my key to activate.
So 2 weeks ago I paid $129(CAD) for another key that I used to activate my software. And I have been using it fine for 2 weeks.
When I posted to this forum a month ago, the first responder berated me for not having a backup of my system.
So that is why I took an image copy backup of my newly rebuilt system, and then put in a new hard drive to do a restore to. test that everything worked fine across the process... But from my recovered drive, when I tried to bring up Outlook and went to look at my account, it said that it needed Activation. Again I did all of this on the same Lenovo system 9960APU.
Why should an image copy from one drive when restored to another drive, not include the activation?
Best regards for Christmas and the New Year!

mikejbird said:

I received around 10 responses to my post. Thank you to each. But I don't know how to answer the questions each of you asked me. What am I supposed to click on to reply? The first question was 'how many drives do I think my license should allow'.
The answer is 1. I'm not trying to steal from Microsoft.

Sorry for sounding harsh! You reply (in general) by typing in the 'quick reply' box at the bottom of the thread. If you want to quote something from another poster, you click the 'quote' thingy in the bottom rt corner of that post - but quoting multiple posters can get messy, and is often not worth it.

The reason for my question was that if you could, without issue, clone a drive multiple times, then you could install the clones in different PCs and run them all simultaneously - which would spoil MS' revenue model. It may be possible to do it once or twice, depending on how MS' activation system sees each installation. I don't have any real insight into what they use to determine if you are running multiple copies of Office, but I suspect it involves taking some signature from the PC (hardware components, probably), and deciding if the PC is the same as previously. This is certainly how Windows activation works.

Since you have now told us you had issues with your first product key (used 23 times) it is possible that you were sold a pup - only you know the likely validity of the source - but $60(CAD) is almost certainly not full price - it is £420 in the UK at the moment!
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/micr...ot:overviewtab

So the second purchase is also unlikely to be fully kosher. It may be a resold key for a copy that has never been previously activated - there are a lot of those about (for Windows anyway).

I would recommend not activating the backup copy - you now know the backup worked, and can deal with any activation issues when you need to use it. It should be a formality - MS know that components fail, and have (in my experience) been quite good about allowing subsequent activations - albeit with some fun and games typing long codes into the activation forms (and finding out what phone number to ring to get going).

I hope I was not the person who berated you about backups - I certainly did so to someone just the other day. But I can find no previous posts from you, so perhaps you have adopted a new identity?

hth, Martin